


Sparring

by shadow_djinni



Series: Haxus Mini Event 2017 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Hand-to-Hand/Sabotage, Haxus Mini Event 2017, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-29 02:59:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12621628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadow_djinni/pseuds/shadow_djinni
Summary: Haxus and Sendak train together.





	Sparring

Haxus was never good at hand-to-hand combat.  Oh, certainly, he’s passably skilled in most weapons the military uses, but face to face confrontations are _not_ his forte.  He’s inclined to blame his height--his reach is shorter than most other Galra, and while he’s not uncoordinated he’s also not exactly light on his feet.  He’s good with a blaster, but the annual assessments include both hand-to-hand and ranged combat.

Which is why he’s on the cruiser’s training level, sparring with a drone.  He ducks a swipe aimed for his face and slashes at the vulnerable ‘abdomen’.  And misses by a handspan.  He sidesteps a vertical slash aimed to cleave him in two.  A kick connects, the drone staggers.  Not enough force to knock it over.  It lunges for him again to grapple.  He skips aside and sticks out a foot, trying to trip it.  It evades, lurching upright and swinging for him.  He backs up again, and again, dodging swipes of the drone’s stunner.  It’s backing him towards the door.  Towards the wall, really, where he won’t be able to evade.  No good.

And then something reflective flies past his shoulder and knocks the drone to the ground.

“I had that covered,” Haxus says, glancing over his shoulder.

“I know,” Sendak says nonchalantly.  “Do you mind if I join you?”

“Not at all,” Haxus says, and turns around entirely.

Sendak is stripped to the waist, as usual when he intends to train, and Haxus takes a moment to appreciate the sight of him.  His cybernetic arm--Haxus’s own work--hums faintly as he stretches.  Every move seems calculated to emphasize the length of his limbs, the strength in them, the breadth of his shoulders and his trim waist.  His cropped fur makes the swell of his muscles more evident--and the presence of his scars, where the fur either hasn’t grown back or grows against the grain.  Haxus hates that he no longer knows all the stories behind the scars that litter Sendak’s body.  The one arching across his right bicep is recent but obviously from before they were reunited as commander and lieutenant, as are the three parallel ones on the back of his right shoulder.  A familiar impulse to trace over them nags at him.  He resists.  There’s a mountain of protocol between the two of them now.

Not that it stops him from ogling Sendak.  He was _made_ to be admired.

Sendak looks up from his stretch and meets Haxus’s eyes.  A smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.  He straightens and crosses his arms, tilts his ears playfully.  “Shall we?”

“Whenever you’re ready,” Haxus says.

“Pairs sequence three,” Sendak declares.  Across the room, three drones activate and begin to advance.

Haxus shifts his stance.  “Feeling ambitious today, are we?”

“You mean confident, right?” Sendak says.  He’s smiling crookedly now, hinting at teeth.  Haxus knows that look.  Sendak’s blood is up and running hot today, it seems.

Then the drones close with them.  Haxus ducks the first blow, moves neatly inside the drone’s range, and rams his knife home into its ‘abdomen’.  It shudders and dies, and he steps back to avoid its collapse.

Sendak’s taken on the other two simultaneously, bobbing around their blows.  He’s _playing_ with them, really--at that range, he could take both of them down in a tick--but he  weaves around them like a dancer.  He makes combat look effortless.  He drops to the floor to evade a blow.  Rolls to dodge a second.  And then he spins on his hand, kicking the drones’ legs out from beneath them.

Haxus is on the nearer of the two in a heartbeat, severing the control wires at the base of the skull.  Sendak has already disabled the other when he looks up--a fist through the chest tends to do that.  He shakes out his cybernetic hand, rather unnecessary since it doesn’t register pain, but that’s just how Sendak is.

“Confident,” Sendak says.

“Whatever you say, _Commander_ ,” Haxus retorts, and grins back.

Sendak hip-checks him and yells, “Sequence five!”  He’s in an odd numbers mood today, apparently.

Before the drones finish activating, he launches himself across the room, snatches something off the weapons rack.  He throws it to Haxus, who sheathes his knife and catches it.  A blaster.

“We’re supposed to practice hand-to-hand!” he shouts.

Sendak snags a Daibazaali hookblade off the rack--a long bladed weapon, sharply hooked at the end.  The inside of the curve is blunt, the outside wickedly sharp.  It’s more gladiator’s weapon than soldier’s these days, but Sendak is absurdly good with it.  He’s strong enough to shear through armor with one.

“You’re telling me this range _isn’t_ hand-to-hand?” Sendak huffs, backing towards Haxus, tossing his weapon from one hand to the other.  He makes it look effortless, though Haxus knows how _heavy_ it is.

“Fair enough,” Haxus says.  A good half-dozen drones advance on them, and the lights along the back wall show more are active.  “So how do we want to do this?”

“The usual?”

“No experimentation today?”

“Only if you want to experiment.”

“Oh, why not.  It’ll be interesting.”

Sendak charges the advance line, ducking a short-range pulse from the end of a stunner.  Haxus lines up a shot and takes down one trying to flank Sendak, knocking it back into the one behind it.  Even unarmored, Sendak is a juggernaut.  He bulldozes through the ranks, spinning and slashing, then retreats towards Haxus.

“Ready?” he asks, crouching slightly.

Haxus recognizes the move, takes a couple steps back, and sprints at Sendak.  The bigger Galra drops into a crouch.  Haxus plants his foot on Sendak’s upper back, ready to spring.  Sendak surges upright underneath him, hurling him airborne.  Haxus shoots down four drones before the apex of his flight.  He twists, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, and ducks.  

Sendak swipes directly over his head, smashing a drone backwards.  Haxus plugs another two from his crouch, then rolls and puts himself behind Sendak’s bulk.  Sendak stands like a wall, smashing the oncoming wave back, and Haxus peeks out from around him to fire shots.

And suddenly the sequence is over.  The room falls silent except for their panting.  Sendak glances over his shoulder, meets Haxus’s gaze and smiles.  Haxus’s heart misses a couple beats.  Sendak is disheveled and gorgeous, and everything in Haxus screams to tackle him and kiss that smile off his mouth.  He holds himself in check, just barely.  It would be a breach of protocol, a serious one.  There are reasons relationships between commanders and lieutenants are banned under the military’s rules, and if _anyone_ caught them, that would be it.  He would never see Sendak again.  And isn’t it better to look but be unable to touch than to spend the rest of his life looking for him?  Yes, yes it is.  Sixteen cycles of separation had confirmed it.  Haxus would take the torment of seeing Sendak every day over the hell that was missing him.

That didn’t mean the air between them is any less charged.  Time and distance have no effect on chemistry, it seems.

Haxus clears his throat and looks away.  “...I should get to the bridge,” he says.  “The training deck is yours.”  Then he turns, replaces the blaster and the knife on the weapons rack, and flees the room.

Sendak makes no move to stop him, but stares at the door long after Haxus leaves.


End file.
